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Comment by cmdli | Hacker News Reader

I feel like this take is dismissive and unhelpful. Expecting people to sacrifice their current wellbeing for the sake of a nebulous, far off reckoning is simply unrealistic and a bit of a dead end in terms of climate progress. We would be better served finding lower impact solutions that are more easily adopted than high impact ones that are never going to be accepted.

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Australia is already having a bit of reckoning due to climate change in the way of mega fires and multiple "hundred year" floods per year in populated areas. At the last federal election, a newish political movement of independents took a large number of seats in parliament. This was possible due to preferential voting (like stacked voting in USA). The left party won power and has done very little on addressing climate change.

I'm now convinced that political will just isn't there even if the people are there (Large emitters donate to politicians). So I see an inevitable path where geoengineering will be seriously on the agenda inside 15 years.

We’ve been talking about this problem since the 90’s. If there were lower impact solutions they are either long past the moment they needed to be implemented (back when denial was still the norm) or they just don’t exist and aren’t coming soon. Magical thinking isn’t helpful, we have to fix this problem with the solutions that exist, not the solutions we wish existed.

Go to war with the army you have, no?

Or not, and just decide that future generations are going to have to suck it up, which is the default choice anyway.

We aren't exactly asking people to sacrifice their wellbeing and convenience completely. That's why for example we aren't asking the population to ditch their cars and switch to trains and bikes, but we are offering them electric cars, which are exactly the kind of lower impact solutions you are speaking of.

An electric car isn't really a lower impact solution for a large amount of the US population. From what I'm able to find, the lowest priced EV (Chevy Bolt) starts around $27k currently[0], whereas the cheapest gas car (Nissan Versa) starts at $17k[1]. This is without even accounting for the larger difference in the used car market, cost of installing a level 2 EV charger (which is another $1k-$2.5k[2], which is necessary for anybody who does any significant amount of traveling in a single day), or the 25% higher insurance premiums for EVs[3]. All said the difference between the two options is a pretty significant difference for most of the population who are already struggling because of the significant inflation rates experienced in recent years[4].

[0] https://www.chevrolet.com/electric/bolt-ev

[1] https://www.nissanusa.com/vehicles/cars/versa-sedan.html

[2] https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/how-much-does-i...

[3] https://www.valuepenguin.com/how-having-electric-car-affects...

[4] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-infl...

Electric cars help, but are not the solution. If everyone in Asia and Africa bought electric cars, it would be a disaster.

That's my point. We aren't looking for "the solution" we are looking for something that helps.

> We would be better served finding lower impact solutions

There aren’t any lower impact solutions that will cut carbon emissions by 40% in the next 5 years.

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